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Over the past few decades, Toyota has been a key player in creating a thriving foreign auto industry on U.S. soil. In 2017, the auto industry giant needed a site for a new, multimillion-square-foot plant. With a hard deadline of going online in 2021, they needed it fast. After years of partnership, our team was already well-versed in Toyota’s priorities, and we mobilized overnight. Our data-driven analyses of real estate, labor and incentives requirements set the foundation for an expedited site search executed with precision.

Click below for our Project Profile on Toyota Mazda’s historic, $1.6-billion investment in a new auto plant in Huntsville, Alabama.

When Toyota found a like-minded partner in Mazda, this undertaking was elevated to historic proportions, and we pivoted with it. Mazda shared Toyota’s philosophies around innovation and productivity, and both firms stood to benefit from the efficiency of working together in one facility.… Read More

Welcome to Episode 19 of RealTime, JLL Chicago’s industrial podcast. In this episode, the team is joined by the International Trade Association of Greater Chicago’s Executive Director Richard Paullin, an expert on tariffs and international trade. While the news is constantly changing, here are some highlights from our conversation:

Today’s tariffs have a ripple effect on tomorrow’s logistics, real estate and transportation sectors, which play a key role in moving goods in and out of the country.

From soybeans to corn, agriculture rules in Illinois; limitations on exports will impact facilities across the market, especially in the I-80 submarket.

Canada and Mexico, America’s two largest trading partners, buy more from the U.S. than our next 10 largest trading partners.

Labor remains a major challenge for manufacturers and distributors with changing immigration policies and employment below 4 percent.

Welcome to the third episode of our new, three-part miniseries, Site Selection Stories: Toyota Mazda. We’re taking you behind the before, during and after of Toyota Mazda’s historic, $1.6-billion investment in a new auto plant in Huntsville, Alabama. Meet the key players:

Welcome to Part 2 of our new, three-part miniseries, Site Selection Stories: Toyota Mazda. We’re taking you behind the before, during and after of Toyota Mazda’s historic, $1.6-billion investment in a new auto plant in Huntsville, Alabama. Meet the key players:

As we all know, any prescription from a healthcare provider comes with directions and dosage amount. Let’s swallow some bitter pills:

40 percent of a hospital’s balance sheet accounts for real estate

Only 1:3 healthcare systems thoroughly evaluate the impact real estate has on profitability

There are 1.68 million hospital beds in the U.S., a number that’s steadily shrinking

“Without using a data-driven approach to real estate, healthcare systems are leaving millions of dollars on the table that could be used to elevate patient experience and quality of care,” says JLL Senior Managing Director Greg Gerber, Healthcare Practice Group lead.… Read More

After the 2015 purchase of the 28-story building at 200 West Jackson, new owners White Oak Realty Partners and Angelo Gordon had a challenge: reinvent a tired, Class B tower for today’s discerning tenants. The task was especially tough with an occupancy rate below 60 percent.

Click below for our Project Profile on 200 West Jackson, a 483,340-square-foot office tower where new ownership turned it up a notch.

Joining the building team soon after, JLL collaborated with ownership to enlist the services of Wright Heerema Architects and Morgan/Harbour Construction to envision and execute on an extensive, Class A renovation that touched 27,876 square feet of the building’s common areas. This sometimes-disruptive construction process required creative solutions to ensure continued tenant satisfaction, including regular communication and weekly happy hours—a tenant favorite.… Read More

Welcome to a special episode of JLL Chicago Industrial – Real Time. Our new, three-part mini-series, Site Selection Stories: Toyota Mazda, will take you behind the before, during and after of Toyota Mazda’s historic, $1.6-billion investment in a new auto plant in Huntsville, Alabama. Meet the key players:

Across submarkets, Millennials fueled the commercial office market’s robust performance in the second quarter.

As global companies continue to change the complexion of their workforce in favor of digital natives, Millennials are having an increasingly outsized influence on major expansions and headquarters relocations. In 2018 alone, international companies including Rio Tinto, Showpad and iam bank have expanded their Chicago-based North American headquarters. The reason? Illinois is the second-largest producer of computer science graduates in the country.

With Illinois graduates accounting for nearly 10 percent of U.S. computer science degrees last year but only modest tech wage growth locally, Bay Area tech firms and legacy employers alike are seeing Chicago as a necessary outpost, especially for highly technical positions. Most recently, that prompted Walgreens’ to plant its flag at the Old Post Office, establishing a 200,000-square-foot digital hub.

This war for talent has definitely made its way into the development pipeline, with 6.6 million square feet underway. While incremental vacancy increases are likely at this point in the cycle, we’re still seeing rent growth, strong absorption numbers and stable concessions.… Read More

The Ritz-Carlton, Chicago’s thoughtful, two-year transformation was planned as a tribute to the city of Chicago, bringing the outside in and celebrating the city’s long history as an architectural innovator. With this guiding principle, the JLL project management team undertook a complex modernization with an eye on both ownership’s interests and a luxury customer experience.

Project scope included a new lobby, bar, cafe, restaurant, ballrooms, meeting rooms, guestroom suites (plus eight luxury apartments) renovation, corridors, club lounge, spa, fitness center and pool, along with mechanical central plant upgrades. One of the team’s most important tasks was the structural modification necessary to open up views in the public areas, the most visible way to elevate design and comfort for the Ritz-Carlton’s next phase of success.… Read More

Welcome to Episode 15.5 of Real Time, JLL Chicago’s industrial podcast. In this episode, the team previews the Chicago market’s second quarter industrial statistics, breaking down everything from vacancy and absorption to investment sales and construction deliveries. The highlights:

Rogers Behavioral Health was founded more than 110 years ago by Dr. Arthur Rogers, a mental health pioneer committed to providing quality healthcare for those suffering from mental illness. One of the country’s largest independent behavioral health systems today, Rogers has expanded nationally beyond its main hospital in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, now annually serving more than 16,000 adults, teens and children across the system. With an eye on pursuing more strategic, data-driven expansion, Rogers connected with our team in summer 2017.

Click below for our Project Profile on Rogers Behavioral Health, an organization that provides thousands of people a place to turn when struggling with mental illness or addiction.

Armed with our proprietary portfolio analytics tool, demographic data and a firm grasp of their business, we caught Rogers’ attention and began building a relationship as the health system’s single source of real estate expertise.
… Read More

On the journey toward value-based healthcare, health systems are facing stiff competition. Consumers’ costs are going up, their expectations are higher and they’re not afraid to comparison shop when it comes to their health and wellness. Add nontraditional healthcare channels like pharmacy and grocery into the mix, and the battle for market share becomes even more crowded.

“To compete in a retail-driven healthcare market, health systems need to take a customer-focused approach to attract and retain both customers and top talent,” said Vicki Eickelberger, Managing Director at Big Red Rooster, a JLL company. “Creating experiences that connect with customers and their needs has been a strategic premise of successful retailing for decades.”

Healthcare is expensive, messy and fraught with emotion. Gaining customers’ trust requires a care-centered brand fueled by strong culture and service standards. If you’re hearing any of the negative statements below within the walls of your health system, reconsider your brand experience.

“I’m lost.”

Hospitals play host to patients, caregivers, visitors and other guests, meaning there’s a need to build out multiple customer experiences within the same environment. It’s the reason many systems have tapped a Chief Experience Officer, and why OhioHealth turned to Big Red Rooster for an easy and intuitive wayfinding system.

After interviewing stakeholders to understand needs and desired outcomes, Big Red Rooster journey mapped each audience’s experience to identify the best placement of branding and signage. Prioritizing simplicity and projecting a sense of calm, public spaces became uplifting landmarks that oriented people efficiently. That consumer-centric filter has extended across the system’s culture, process and design, resulting in valuable continuity across ambulatory, outpatient and pharmacy sites.… Read More

“There’s been a big push by retail landlords to try and attract medical tenants to diversify their portfolios, many of which have been struggling to adapt to the changing nature of retail,” JLL Senior Vice President Sarah Cogswellsaid at a recent RE Journals’ event.

The challenge is catering to the specifics of healthcare tenants. Landlords are used to retailers that have their specs down to a science, a repeatable façade and the ability to take over a building and make it their own.… Read More

Shopping on your lunch hour never gets old. Especially in the suburbs, where the live/work/play perks of urban density are in short supply. Suburban malls offer the opportunity to run errands during lunch, while also conveniently supporting a wide array of business amenities such as restaurants and event space for everyday meetings and larger corporate gatherings.

Across suburban Chicago, Class A office properties within a mile of a major mall are outperforming their competition in three out of four major suburban submarkets. While the area around Fashion Outlets of Chicago appears to be flagging, JLL Research attributes that to lack of concentrated Class A buildings surrounding the retail center and the size of nearby O’Hare airport.

Just in time for summer, we’re here with an office space discount you have to see to believe. In the last five years, the gap between top-tier downtown and suburban space has dramatically widened, creating interesting opportunities for occupiers looking for luxury.

Since 2012, Class A rents have increased just 3.2 percent in the suburbs, compared with more than 21.5 percent downtown. For even the smallest tenants, this represents six-figure savings that could be reallocated to other business priorities, from talent retention to technology upgrades.… Read More

At a recent NAIOP Chicago event, the topic wasn’t real estate; it was labor. February saw the highest monthly level of job creation since mid-2016 and unemployment sits at just 4.1 percent as skilled talent becomes increasingly difficult to recruit and retain.

JLL’s Meredith O’Connor and Keith Stauber

“Job growth continues rapidly even with talent shortages and employment occurring faster than the labor force can expand,” said JLL Managing Director Keith Stauber, moderator. “These trends also mirror consumer confidence, which has been at its highest levels since 2000.”

Greater competition for labor has pushed occupiers to look at long-term workforce productivity and sustainability (including metrics like net migration and population growth) rather than short term affordability.

The NAIOP panel of experts featured JLL International Director Meredith O’Connor, Co-Chairman of JLL’s Headquarters Practice Group and a Business and Economic Incentives lead. Her top 10 takeaways:… Read More

Thanks to her innate talent, drive and uncompromising work ethic, Meredith O’Connor is without equal in the city. Her secret superpower? She’s a connector. By building relationships with likeminded and equally motivated individuals, no matter their career or industry specialization, she’s built a business to be reckoned with and lifelong friends along the way.

A key player in helping corporations uncover often overlooked business and economic incentives, Meredith’s work continues to change skylines and bolster economies across the country. Let’s take a look at how it all began.

Meredith and her family of seven

Career beginnings

Government was the perfect start for Meredith, doing great things for the city she grew up in and loves. After she got her MBA, she was promoted from sergeant at arms in the City Council into the Planning Department. Under the inspiring leadership of Mayor Daley and in partnership with a team passionate about economic development, she jump-started her career working on exciting projects from the ’96 Democratic National Convention to the 2016 Olympic bid.… Read More

Spoiler alert. In the shared economy, everyone’s customer is the end user. The knowledge worker, the talent, the Millennials, whatever you want to call it. At Chicago 2025, JLL Chicago’s marquee event held earlier this month, we heard from some of the industry’s top thought leaders on how they’re navigating the shared economy’s major changes to the way we operate.

Panelists John Gavin, Andrea Zopp and Chris Kelly

The No. 1 thing tenants talk about is talent, said World Business Chicago president and CEO AndreaZopp, which is positive news for Chicago. We’re drawing college graduates at a higher rate than our comparable cities because people are looking for quality of life, affordability and a wide variety of housing options to evolve in an urban environment. And what talent wants is driving both major business decisions and major municipal ones, like Chicago’s investment in Divvy, our bike share program. All employers want is the ability to compete, and Chicago’s diverse economy, connectivity, access to transit, and quality of neighborhoods are all formidable tools for their arsenal. Expect forward-thinking initiatives like the planned express train to O’Hare to go a long way in attracting and retaining our major corporate occupiers.… Read More

Welcome to Episode 14 of RealTime, JLL Chicago’s industrial podcast. In our one-year anniversary episode, the team fields questions from our valued listeners. The industrial market tried to stump our experts, but were they successful? Listen for a surprise special guest and our hosts’ answers to questions including:

What is the definition ofinfill?

What are you seeing in I-55 as far as demand versus current supply?

Is commercial property beginning to respond to changes in interest rates and values?

If you could put $100 million to work, which submarket would you pick and why?

What’s driving the uptick in leasing of 350,000 to 500,000-square-foot properties?

Thank you to all of our guests and listeners for a fantastic first season. It’s been a pleasure sharing our insight on one of the most exciting and active industrial markets in the country. We continue to learn so much from collaborating with all of you. Season Two is going to clear new heights!

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JLL's Chicago blog offers expert insight on news and trends for owners, investors and tenants of commercial real estate. Learn more about our services and our professionals to see how they’ve helped clients throughout the Chicago area with their commercial real estate needs.

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